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125001-what-do-the-words-casual-and-hardcore-mean-in-wildstar
Content ---- ---- Shhh, don't tell anyone. It'll ruin your street cred. :ph34r: Also, sorry to hear about your day, unless it really was fun in which case party on. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- I agree with this quote. It's all about your drive and your dedication to achieve that goal. It has nothing to do with being skilled or bad in combat. I can name two of the best stalkers in the game that are casuals and i wish to have them in my guild, except they do not feel the need to raid extensive hours and race for world firsts so they remain in their casual guilds. I can also name a couple horrible players that raid extensive hours and in fact have world first/second achievements (because their guild as a whole is great). As the quote said, a hardcore player is driven by being the best at what they do, and win against the competition, for that, playing a lot during release of new content becomes mandatory for a hardcore player, and playing with skilled players is also mandatory to win the competition, that does not mean there are no bad hardcore players because there sure are, but they are mostly not welcome in a leading hardcore guild if there was a replacement that is better. Meanwhile a casual player does not care if he killed said boss first or second or 100th, they just want to play with their friends, have fun, and see the content at their own pace. I have a joke that actually, to me, has some truth to it... "guys we're not here to have fun and joke around, focus up and lets kill it!"... Why? because most of the fun comes from winning the race to world first, in fact, if another guild kills something before me, i don't enjoy my own kill when it happens. Don't confuse that with (hardcore players never have fun its a job!)... What i described earlier is only for progress, and for a hardcore guild that is a very short period, clear the content in 1-2 weeks, then you have months of joking around in the raid and doing silly things for fun... Meanwhile a casual guild needs to focus up for months to come... So if you ask me, i'd say a hardcore guild gets to fool around in raids more than casual guilds. :D | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- For me, the fun comes from getting the kill surrounded by people I like. Winning is ALWAYS more fun than losing. However, I'm not bothered by taking a bit longer to down things (as evidenced by my guild just recently starting to seriously work on DS). I have been known to tell folks to focus up and kill the thing already! I think, as many others have stated, that there is a lot of grey zone between "hardcore" and "casual" and what those terms mean or that spectrum looks like. Everyone should be able to play the games in the way that they enjoy. It does not mean that every games needs to cater to every player, or that every part of every game needs to be enjoyed by everyone on the spectrum. Take what you like, and leave the rest. (I use that philosophy in many, many aspects of my life) | |} ---- ---- I can understand that, and i described that as casual in my post, here: | |} ---- ---- My first instinct to solve that is by extending the third definition of hardcore to "spends lots of time in the game's progression". Then you do not have to say that those who spend a lot of time not actually progressing are hardcore. | |} ---- Yeah, me too--but then that excludes the possibility of being hardcore about anything other than progression. Which isn't necessarily an inaccurate way of thinking about the way the term is used, but certainly implies that the type of content matters a lot in the definition rather than just time spent playing. | |} ---- the problem with that is the guilds and players that are often considered the most hardcore also spend the least time in the games progression. They reach farm status far quicker than more casual raiding guilds I suppose it can also depend on how you define "spends heaps of time in the games progression" If you spend 30 hrs a week for a month in progression that is heaps of time but so is spending 9 hrs a week for 6 months. However, while most would probably consider the first scenario to be hardcore I don't think many would consider the second scenario hardcore | |} ---- Someone who spends lots of time just doing whatever in the game doesn't meet the hardcore or casual categories. They're just people with a lot of time to waste, with little need to market them directly. That's not hardcore or casual, just the MMO designer's dream. Someone who will pay the sub and doesn't require any particular marketing strategy. The closest thing that person, one who spends large amounts of time without any clear goal, would fall into, would be a casual. They perform many of the casual friendly tasks, at their leisure at an irregular rate. That type of player is best marketed by adding a lot of content, not just content targeted at casual or hardcore. Raids like the 20mans in Wildstar are by definition hardcore. You would definitely consider a progression guild that spends 30hrs a week in the game hardcore, but why wouldn't you consider someone who spends 9hrs a week, hardcore? They're just degrees of the same term. The distinction to note here, is that those players are marketed as players who participate in regular / dedicated activities. Does it kind of make sense that the raid itself is designed for the hardcore, because it is progression based (one boss after the other), requires a regular schedule with 19 other people to accomplish, and requires a dedication of time. Would it help if I helped explain how Wildstar became more casual friendly after the re-itemization of gear and attunement slack of GA? Genetic Archives, while designed and marketed for the hardcore, underwent a shift to the casual. Less dedicated players were able to tackle the instance thanks to an increased power level of their gear. Pug GAs can often go smoothly, or be rough, but are irregular in activity. They are a more relaxed atmosphere. A good example of a raid that is casual friendly would be the new raid. It can be accomplished by a skilled group of players, at any time of the week, as long as people put the group together. It can be done without a regular schedule, a significant time dedication, and by the average player. There is also a more "hardcore" mode, for those more dedicated (read geared), if they desire. /// And hopefully just to go back to your previous talk about hardcore casuals: let's take housing. Housing is designed to be casual, but can be accomplished in a hardcore manner. IF someone were to casually log in and participate in housing, IE, irregularly play in a relaxed / unconcerned manner, they can have fun. However, someone could decide they want to dedicate more time, and log in more regularly, to accomplish tasks / go after items that the casual would take significantly more time to acquire. //// What this all comes down to on a base level is standard psychology, and that's how you market MMOs. Instant gratification, with elements of long term gratification. Housing: instant gratification, with potentially long term gratification PvP: instant gratification with kills / gear, with potentially long term gratification (end of season rewards / gear / titles etc) Shiphands: instant gratification all around, with potentially long term gratification (end of shiphand rewards, or renown loot from vendors etc) Dungeons: instant gratification (boss kills rewards epics), with potentially long term gratification (attunement / imbuements) Raids: instant gratification (boss kills reward legendaries), with potentially long term gratification (raid completion, speeder-bikes, artifacts) What separates the casual from the hardcore is the time it takes to reach the long term gratification features. Housing: varies (good) PvP: varies. (kills instant -> bg rewards 30m -> piece rewards 45m - 4 hours -> end of season rewards #hardcore) Shiphands: short ~15minutes good Dungeons: short-medium ~30-45, good Datascape Raids: 6-12 hours ++, hardcore I feel this all might be an oversimplification of the whole thing, because if it were all easy to understand, games like WoW would have millions of subscribers (oh wait, lol). But seriously, there's more to it than that. Hardcore and Casual do not mean more and less skilled, that's just a correlation | |} ---- ---- ---- People who can't sleep because they fell asleep earlier in their contacts because their girlfriend wouldn't let them leave until 6:30am and now they're in a bedroom with a nice big window without blackout blinds and are fully aware of run-on sentences write dissertations -_- | |} ---- ---- that mode your pc goes into when you poop too long | |} ---- I actually was agreeing with you here. Sorry if that wasn't clear! I refer to my guild as "semi-casual." If I had had my coffee in hand when I read this, I'd have probably spewed it out my nose. LOL | |} ---- Finally, I achieve the ranks of the hardcore in some sense! :lol: But then being hardcore or casual isn't just about how much time gets spent, it's about how it's getting spent, right? Someone spending lots of time just piddling around doing whatever appeals to them at the time is completely hardcore in terms of time spent, but you're describing them as closer to casual. What would have to change to make that player closer to hardcore? | |} ---- Them deciding to dedicate their time spent into something regular etc. Dicking around for 12 hours doesn't make you hardcore, it just means that it doesn't matter what kind of content someone can make, they're not trying to market that person. Whether that person decides to do activites aimed at casuals over and over again for 12 hours is one thing. Or they can decide to do activites aimed at the hardcore playerbase. Hell, someone who plays for 12 hours on Saturday and not any else of the week would most likely be considered a casual player. They're just consuming a lot of casual content in one sitting. | |} ---- ---- ---- I don't agree with the statement that there's no content targeted to these people--it's why I agree with you that they're closer to casual than to hardcore. Because these players aren't defined by how much time they spend, they're defined by how they use the time they do have. They're just wandering around experiencing whatever the game allows them to. Messing around without focus for 12 hours may not have a particular content design philosophy that caters to it, but it definitely has a particular content design philosophy that excludes it. Content that is wasted on them requires traits that they expressly don't bring to the game with them: focus, commitment, practice, scheduling. The fact that they don't have focus doesn't mean they're RNG-based Activity Consumers--they're still people who still gravitate towards things that don't involve the infinite loop "Enter. Take a step. Pwned. Repeat." This game may not market to that kind of player very effectively, but that doesn't mean it can't. Sure, but aren't we back to the definition not really being about time, or large blocks of time, or regularly scheduled blocks of time? It's about what they're doing with the time they're spending. | |} ---- ---- Would that make me hardcore then o.0 | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- Complete opposite imo! but;) | |} ----